The final tally of books entered for The Story Prize this year is 72, from 55 publishers or imprints, adding up to a total of 973 stories. Between now and the end of the year, Julie Lindsey (the founder of the prize) and I will be doing a lot of reading in preparation for choosing our three finalists, which we'll announce in early January.
To select those books, Julie and I will meet and talk about the collections we each like best until we can settle on just three. Sometimes, we end that meeting without making final choices and take another day or so to think it over. It should be especially hard to narrow the field down to three this year because it looks like we'll have at least a dozen serious contenders. Stay tuned.
